

COST OF IMMIGRATION. 381 



ling, or 28 per cent., for each individual. The best ships for such 

 voyages would evidently be clippers, since both the immigrants 

 and the contractors would be gainers by a quick passage. Our 

 present Immigration Ordinance could be easily adapted to meet 

 the contingencies attaching to all classes of immigrants. I, however, 

 deprecate any system of immigration whatever " that would end 

 merely in supplying the planters ivith cheap labour ; " such a 

 system must tend to create misery, and to spread dissatisfaction. 

 To produce permanent benefits, paid immigration should be 

 coupled with other measures, having for aim and end the moral 

 and physical welfare of the immigrants. This Lord Harris had 

 in view, and I have much pleasure in being able to quote on this 

 subject the disinterested opinion of a nobleman whom none will 

 accuse of being inimical to the planting interest. 



" There can be no doubt that the prosperity, nay, the ex- 

 istence of these colonies depends on a cheap and steady supply of 

 labour ; the favourable solution of free against slave labour must 

 depend on it ; every means ought to be tried, more especially on 

 the part of the mother country, to obtain it on as cheap terms as 

 possible ; but the last means I would recommend to resort to, 

 would be to pen in, as it were, the inhabitants of this island, so 

 little fitted, as I have before shown, for any trial of the kind." 



"To compete successfully with the slave grower, and to 

 render free labour permanently remunerative in this climate, 

 much more is required than the temporary expedient of reducing 

 wages ly the introduction of coolies or Africans; and, apart from 

 mechanical appliances, more reliance than heretofore must be placed 

 in inculcating industrious and settled habits amongst the labourers, 

 who, so far from advancing in civilisation during the last two or 

 three years, when affluence and comfort unknown to any other 

 labouring population have been within their reach with little or 

 no toil, have actually retrograded and evinced but little desire to 

 accumulate wealth, affording but too good reason to fear that 

 under adversity they would revert to a state of barbarism." (April, 

 1848.) 



What that state of barbarism may be we may form a faint 

 idea from the present condition of our population generally, and 

 of the squatters in particular. The adversity which loomed in the 

 future has, at last, reached its culminating point the planter is 



